The guys at Wishood.com would have wished for this story to end better. A year ago, this Israeli startup had every reason to be optimistic – They established a user generated content site around wish exchange, secured a seed investment from Dr. Yossi Vardi and other angels and created cute widgets that were positively reviewed by Mashable , Webware and others – the future looked bright.
From Wishood’s blog:
The new Wishood is the place to publicize all your heart’s desires with friends, family, the world. Once a wish has been made, people can offer to grant it for you! Wishes could be granted in parts by several great people – providing advice, making contact and more… actually granting a wish.
The business model was a long shot – Wishood wanted to match products to people’s wishes, but probably the difference between wishing for an Aston Martin and buying one online is pretty far. I also suspect that trying to monetize the Valentine’s Day widget through FavoriteThingz and Nabbr wasn’t enough.
At TC50, Vardi commented that when he invests in a company, he primarily invests in the people. The entrepreneurs shouldn’t be good or nice – they need to be nothing but excellent, so if/when a startup fails (unfortunately statistics are against you in this case), it is as if you gave a scholarship to a talented student.
Sadly, the company blog is deserted, traffic went completely flat in April and the domain Wishood.com is being parked by the hosting company. Wishood was launched in 2007 and led by CEO Lior Katz.
Before:
After:
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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